Cancer is a funny thing – it can either destroy a life or it can reset it.  Perhaps a coincidence, or the work of a higher power that intervened to remind me of a promise made to myself when working as a dishwasher in high school.  That at age 45 I would not work in any job that I did not want to do just because I needed the money — that I would enjoy myself and hopefully never turn into that old cranky person I saw so much at the restaurant counter.

A 2010 diagnosis followed by a year of treatment provided a much-needed pause in the day to day working grind.  Cancer took away what was left of any ability to function at the high cognitive level expected by the executive level folk du jour at the corporate job.   It allowed for a reset and reminder of that promise, and a chance to plot what Dan 2.0 would be.

Seven years later in 2017, I left the corporate world to figure out what was next.  While I cannot say enough how well MetLife allowed me to try to return to pre-cancer level work, we both ran out of patience with each other and parted ways in 2017.  

After a nine-week trip across the county, and an short apprenticeship at a local winery, Space Time Mead & Cider Works was born.  I had been making beer, wine, mead and cider at home as a hobby since 2008.  I received good feedback at mead and cider competitions, taught at local homebrew club events and really enjoyed wine making.  While I will tell anyone not to ruin a good wine making hobby by making it a business, I felt this was something I needed to try.  I would become a professional mead and cider maker and seller.

On June 29, 2018 – after exactly 1 year to the day I had left the corporate world, we open our doors and began to sell our first bottles of mead, cider, and grape wine.  

I have loved every day since.